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Analysis

Briefs Addressing Justiciability

To help court-watchers sort through more than one thousand pages of amicus briefs in Gill v. Whitford, the Brennan Center has prepared an annotated guide breaking down each brief’s most important arguments.

September 19, 2017

Brief for Constitutional Law Professors in Support of Appellees (Kathleen Sullivan, et al.)

Summary: This brief, filed by a group of 18 constitutional law professors led by Kathleen Sullivan, explains that the Court should not rely on the “judicial manageability” prong of the political question doctrine to rule that partisan gerrymandering claims are non-justiciable. Deploying the judicial manageability prong in the way the Appellants have requested, the professors warn, would depart from the Court’s history and practice, cast doubt on key constitutional precedents, and create harmful practical consequences for the courts’ ability to address pressing constitutional issues. The law firm Quinn Emanuel Urquhart is counsel for this brief.

Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty in Support of Appellants

Summary: This brief, filed by the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, argues that partisan gerrymandering claims are not justiciable, because, among other things, no manageable standard for deciding partisan gerrymandering claims has emerged. Amicus further argues that electoral maps, such as Wisconsin’s, that comply with traditional redistricting criteria are not unconstitutional partisan gerrymanders as a matter of Supreme Court law. The Wisconsin Institute and the law firm Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher are co-counsel for this brief.